


A Spring Storm

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Billy's curious, Hurt/Comfort, I wanted to write Flint being not angry and showing off his soft little underbelly, M/M, Need, Revelations, set around 3.01 maybe before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-21 23:52:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6062824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy stumbles upon James's copy of Meditations while waiting for him to return to his cabin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Spring Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boundtomyfate](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=boundtomyfate).



> Created for a writing prompt where Billy finds Meditations and wonders who T.H. is.

Billy closed the door to the captain’s cabin behind him, shutting out the din of the voices on deck. He gave a small shudder at the feeling of the cool drizzle that had dampened his clothes. There was a storm on the way, and the sea was growing rough.

He was alone in the cabin. Flint had told him that he would be in shortly after discussing some crew issues with Silver. Billy now thought of the Walrus's cabin as the closest thing he had to a home. He no longer saw it through the eyes of a bosun as simply a private location to converse with his captain, not since they’d been sleeping together for the last month. Billy had spent more time in this room in those last thirty days than he had since he’d first set foot on the Walrus.

Now, as Billy crossed the room he treated the cabin as a home, lighting several candles to chase away the gloom without much thought. Absently he straightened a few items on Flint’s desk that the man always left lying haphazardly about. Billy thought it was cute how Flint always kept the bookcase with its many volumes in pristine condition—a luxury for a pirate ship—yet could have cared less about the order of his charts and maps or where his compass was.

Billy’s eyes flicked to the bookcase again. That was one area he had not grown comfortable with. He was one of the few men aside from captain and quartermaster on the ship who was lettered. Flint had never forbade him from the books, yet when Billy considered doing anything more than scanning their titles he felt certain he would be violating something.

The ship pitched hard as the storm picked up outside, and one of Flint’s spyglasses he’d left on the desktop went rolling towards the edge. Billy lunged forward and caught it smoothly, chuckling to himself. He wondered how many items Flint had either lost or had broke this way.

Billy opened the narrow top drawer to the desk to put away the glass but it was stuffed full of writing paper and quills. Frowning, he dipped down and opened the larger, bottom drawer. As he sat the glass inside, the ship rolled heavily again and something heavy slid into view from the very back of the drawer.

Billy reached in and pulled it forward just enough to see it. A led leather book, with a design emblazoned around its front cover and a flower-like symbol in its center. Expensive, Billy thought. The idea that the book was clearly hidden caused him to start to shove it back, but Billy’s fingertips hesitated. James had said he’d be gone fifteen or so minutes. He’d only been in here for a few of those.

The desire to know more about the man he’d at last become so intimate with began to crawl up into Billy’s gut again. James could look at him in a way that made Billy feel like he had reached the white-hot center of the man; could touch him with the same effect. That would satiate Billy’s questions for a time, but when his satisfaction would fade and he tried to prod James for his history he’d get little more than a crooked smile and some vague commentary about how he left the navy.

Now, as Billy’s fingers lingered over the smooth surface of this particular book, separated out from the dozens of others right behind him, Billy took a deep breath and made up his mind. It was probably nothing, he realized. Flint was probably just reading it and wanted it close at hand. Nothing more.

After a glance towards the door Billy pulled out the book and sat down in James's chair. He opened it to the first page. There was a short inscription there in elegant script. When he saw James's given name there he immediately thought of Ms. Barlow, but the inscription was signed T.H., and Billy quickly came to the conclusion he had no clue who that was. And, “My truest love?” More significantly, the hand writing clearly belonged to a man.

A man? Calling James his truest love?

Mind reeling, Billy started flipping through the book, page by page, then faster when he came upon nothing else. He made it to the end of the book without discovering anything other than the words of Marcus Aurelius inside. He flipped through it again and again, growing more desperate for knowledge when none was forthcoming. At last he sat the book down in front of him and stared at it. What the fuck?

Billy turned in the chair to look at the bookcase once more, staring at it as though it held something huge and massively important to unlocking all of James Flint’s secrets that he had ever wanted to know.

He resisted the urge to start flipping through them all, one by one, until he found his answers.

Instead Billy returned Meditations to where he’d found it, tucked behind the spyglass, and very slowly shut the drawer.

James entered a few minutes later and Billy’s head was even more muddled and curious. James shut the door behind him, giving Billy a nod and looking soaked from the now-steady rain that tinged off the stern windows. He ran a hand over his cropped hair, flinging water to the floor and took off his coat.

“Weather’s not that bad, just a spring storm,” he said. “Silver’s learning fast about his new duties, though that leg of his will give him trouble for a while—what you doing sitting there?”

For the first time Flint focused on him, crossing the room and looking quizzically at his bosun. Billy decided it was pointless to try and hide anything. He had learned that, among other interesting qualities, James was unnervingly perceptive about a person’s mood, especially when it was towards himself.

“I was reading,” Billy said softly. He didn’t move to give James his chair back.

“Oh? I wondered if and when you’d gain an interest,” quipped Flint, though now he was eyeing Billy curiously.

Billy swallowed. He let his gaze drift to the bottom drawer. He felt his pulse pounding behind his ears.

“You’re spyglass fell. I put it away,” he said.

James's brows furrowed.

“All right…”

“In there,” said Billy, nodding at the drawer.

James's eyes met his again and the change in him was nothing short of a shock. Before he could speak Billy cut him off. His words came out clipped; he was too unsure of himself, of James's reaction.

“I didn’t know…what it was. So I opened it and started reading. Just the first page.”

Billy dragged his eyes to meet James's again, waiting. He saw James's jaw clench tight, saw those sea green eyes harden, as though he were raising the invisible shield, as Billy thought of it, to block everything out. Then the look softened again. James gave a heavy sigh and turned towards the window. Billy watched, fascinated, as his gaze grew far away. Billy’s heart fell. Whatever it was, he would get no more information about it tonight.

“I should go,” said Billy, rising from the chair. He made it halfway across the room when he was stopped in his tracks.

“Wait, Billy.”

Billy turned, his pulse quickening again. James motioned for him to return. And suddenly Billy wanted to decline again, to say it was fine; fine because maybe he didn’t really want to know who T.H. was, because suddenly he was terrified of T.H. and what it might mean to his time with James.

The words came flying from his mouth before Billy could stop them.

“Is there someone else? Because if there is, and that’s him, I’m all right. No, that’s not true. I’m not all right, but we can just end this, and—”

He hadn’t realized he was rambling, babbling, sounding like a complete fool, until James turned from the window and quickly crossed the room, looking at Billy like he meant to save him from falling overboard for a second time.

“No Billy, stop.”

And Billy did, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. Fuck.

“That isn’t how it is,” said James. “That man is…he’s gone.”

The words were so full of emotion and so stripped at the same time that Billy forgot his embarrassment.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Billy, for lack of anything better to say. Was he sorry T.H. was gone, or sorry he’d accidentally wrung the painful information from James? He wasn’t certain. What was certain, however, was that James needed him now and that his invisible shield had dropped; Billy sensed that the burden of wielding it had become too much for him.

Billy closed the gap between them and raised his hand to caress James's face, tracing a thumb under his eye.

“It’s all right,” he whispered.

James gave an unsteady sigh, shoulders relaxing as he seemed to melt into Billy’s touch. Then he straightened and took a breath, as though readying himself for an immense plunge into something unknown or new—or very old, Billy thought.

Either way, Billy decided he would hold fast to him and not let go unless James wished it.

“His name,” James began, “was Thomas Hamilton. He was Miranda’s husband, and I loved him…”

***


End file.
